Wonder Woman, Volume 2

Guts
written by Brian Azzarello
art by Cliff Chang and Tony Akins
(additional art and inks by Kano and Dan Green)

Azzarello's DCified take on Greek mythology continues to impress.  If his first Wonder Woman arc—Blood—distanced itself narratively and tonally, his second—Guts—finally leaves it behind.  It's not that he won't be able to integrate other DC superheroes later on, but that right now it's working so well without them.  He has immersed Diana in her mythological roots, taking her quite literally to Hell and back, and it's exceptional to behold.

Wonder Woman's gods simultaneously meet and defy expectation, both their characterization and their visual representation.  Eros may be blond, beautiful, and fit in a pair of skinny red jeans with his golden guns, and Artemis's steely allure may intimidate, but it's Hephaestus who steals the show here.  Tucked behind a charming jewelry shop in Firenze, the craftsman of the gods, Hephaestus mans his forge.  He is both impressive and vulnerable, broad and strong and wearing leg braces from his fall from Olympus.  He is also disarmingly generous and noble, disappointed by his Olympian family and disposed to help Diana for her principles rather than debt, loyalty or deceit.

Azzarello is also keen to humble his heroine a little, to provoke a little ambiguity in her principles, which are so characteristically steadfast and certain, and Hephaestus is a particularly appropriate tool to accomplish this.  Wonder Woman spends an entire issue attempting to rescue her brothers, the unwanted male offspring of Amazons bought by Hephaestus, from slavery only to discover that they were never slaves, more like adopted children of the mild-mannered smith.  Her embarrassment and shame at her actions is palpable, especially considering her increasingly knowledge regarding the occasional brutality and hypocrisy of her Amazon upbringing, which in part inspired her mission to emancipate the workers.  Hephaestus is also capable of calling her out on her tactics.  Having caught him asleep in his bedroom and bound him in her lasso, she quips, "You said my lasso isn't a weapon, but when one is entwined in it, they speak the truth.  And that—the truth—is my weapon."  But he, rightly is quick to point out her own hypocrisy:  "No...your weapon is intimidation.  You blame the rope.  That's the truth."

The collection's final showdown on Olympus, Apollo's ascendancy to the throne given the continued absence of Zeus, is quietly unsuspected.  From Wonder Woman #1, the god's ambitions of kingship seemed rash and presumptuous.  That he succeeds, to Hera's surprise more than my own, is cleverly straightforward.  No last minute intervention.  No disruption by Diana, who, to my continued pleasure, doesn't find it all that important and whose priority remains, as it always was, Zola and the child.  After it all, the cover to Wonder Woman #12 (pictured right) is still a mystery.


Once again, Cliff Chang's portions of the series--and his gorgeous cover art—outstrip the other artistic contributors, though Akins and (briefly) Kano do an admirable job bringing Hades to life, particularly given its highly abstract description offered by the story.  How, exactly, do you draw a world constructed out of souls?  Although it is, no doubt, scripted, they also execute a few good visual jokes.  Most obviously, Aphrodite.  That the god of love, beautiful and irresistible, cannot be illustrated in the more family-friendly DC universe, doesn't stop her from making an appearance.  Artists use panel edges to clip and overlay the offending body parts, but the result is both teasing in what it doesn't show and funny in how it does it.  It also deftly recognizes that the most beautiful goddess ever can't actually be shown.  No figure can be infinitely beautiful to everybody.  Not showing her, therefore, keeps her unfathomable beauty in tact.

Collects Wonder Woman #7-12

ISBN:  978-1401238094

Wonder Woman, Volume 1

Blood
written by Brian Azzarello
art by Cliff Chiang and Tony Akins

Certainly, gender has always been at or near the center of Wonder Woman stories, her very inception as a character being ideologically driven as model for an ideal woman.  And Azzarello further stirs them up in his opening arc of the rebooted series, sometimes walking a very fine and dangerous line.  As if the conventions surrounding a super-powered female hero weren't already troublesome and divisive territory in contemporary comics, immediately, Wonder Woman dregs up situations bristling with volatile gender relations:  spousal infidelity, woman-on-woman revenge, disparate cultural attitudes toward men's and women's sexual promiscuity, extra-marital pregnancy and single-parenthood, single-sex communities and their corresponding gender discrimination, and gender solidarity and its corresponding bias.  To the credit of Azzarello and his all-male artistic team, Wonder Woman is remarkably fair if not particularly insightful.  If Wonder Woman includes all of these unfortunate instances related to gender, it also offers alternatives.  Hermes' friendship with Diana and his intervention on behalf of Zola are welcome collaborations between genders.  Likewise, Diana insists that safe-keeping Zola from the vengeance of Hera is not siding with Zeus against his spurned wife nor necessarily condoning his infidelity but instead defending the hapless woman unwittingly caught between them.

Even more, Wonder Woman is fully credible as a warrior and a woman.  This is particularly true of her visual representation.  She retains many of the physical characteristics stereotypical of female superheros, which have long defined her and others, including thick, long hair, a finely cut and curvaceous figure, and delicate facial features—and if she's not wearing make-up, she might as well be.  However, Chang in particular has made her physically formidable, not only in her strong, broad shoulders and hips, but also in her easy athleticism.  Without making any dramatic changes, Chang and Akins have also redesigned her costume to accommodate her more robust physique.  Her top may remain strapless, but her bust is fully covered; her shorts may remain, well, short, but they are more reminiscent of MMA-wear than a bathing suit.  It's also notable that the newly textured top and the metallic ornaments around the waist and bust make her costume look more like armor than lingerie.

Though much of these newly tweaked aspects were necessary, the series itself seems less interested in them, once her credibility is established, than in its mythological backdrop.  To my knowledge, though there seem to be a variety of differently nuanced versions of Wonder Woman's creation, the one offered by Azzarello in issue #3 is unique, and for the first time I can recall, really makes sense in the larger scheme of the story.  Wonder Woman, a 1941 creation who showed up in star-spangled American glory to fight the Nazis, has always seemed so inextricably entrenched in her World War II beginnings that her place as an Amazon rooted in Greek mythology has always seemed, in comparison, to be haphazard and disconnected.  Here, Azzarello changes that.  Much like the dead and bloated hippocamp that surfaces from the Thames in issue #5, mythological characters—gods and their consorts—continually pop up in Wonder Woman's contemporary setting.  Their uneasy, if mostly resigned, relationship with the 21st-century human world—not a little indebted to their conceptual predecessors in novels like Gaiman's American Gods—is perhaps symptomatic of Wonder Woman's own former disjunction with her own past, but it is precisely this uneasiness that makes their inclusion in her world plausible.

Though it begins like a simple cautionary tale on the dangers of betraying one's wife, Blood becomes a second account of the division of the world among the progeny of Cronos.  Following Zeus's mysterious disappearance, which has been kept mostly quiet by his son Apollo, lordship over the heavens is seemingly vacated.  No longer satisfied with their inferior portions and their subordinate status, Poseidon rises from the sea and Hades from the underworld, each to claim his portion.  Unexpectedly for them, though it is fully in line with Azzarello's exploration of gendered power, their sister—and Zeus's repeatedly scorned wife—Hera also shows to stake her claim to his kingdom.  Although all of the gods in Wonder Woman are somewhat uniquely adorned--Apollo with his ebony skin and blazing eyes; Hermes with bird feet, a beakish nose, glassy black eyes, and sporadic feathers; Hera with her Argos-inspired peacock cloak; and Strife with her shredded black dress, gaunt figure, and buzzed hair--brothers Poseidon and Hades are more consumed by their mythological identity than the others.  Their unusual depiction, so vastly different and unexpected, is particularly refreshing.  Poseidon emerges as a behemoth, an oceanic hybrid beast, entirely without anthropomorphic form.  Hades arrives from the cavernous under-city drainage system with three-headed Cerberus, his head more a gothic candelabra, dripping with wax, than a face.

While the first six issues, which comprise the TPB edition, share several strong thematic ideas--many related to its given title--and continuity of storytelling, there is little at the end to suggest that it completes its arc.  Instead, Blood sets up the next act of a continuing story.  Unlike so many comics, which seem to anticipate collection in trade form, Azzarello has approached Wonder Woman as a true serial.

Collects Wonder Woman #1-6

ISBN:  978-1401235635